


Gotta Take a Bow, Do it Your Way (It’s Okay)

by DeerstalkerDeathFrisbee



Series: True Love or Something [3]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Boys In Love, Fluff, Fluffy Ending, Gen, Keith loves him anyway, Lance (Voltron) is a Mess, M/M, Misunderstandings, Theatre, boys being dumb
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-10
Updated: 2016-12-10
Packaged: 2018-09-07 15:21:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8806021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeerstalkerDeathFrisbee/pseuds/DeerstalkerDeathFrisbee
Summary: “Keith.  Babe.  Keith.”  Keith can’t really pay attention to whoever is trying to distract him right now; he has to re-write the whole damn cuebook because some idiot spilled coffee on his original and this is why food and beverages belong outside the control booth. “Keith, you’re vibrating.  Like, literally shaking like a Chihuahua.”  “Did you bring me coffee?” “No, I’m trying to bring you some sanity, but I’ll settle for common sense.” “Okay.”  
It's Tech Week at the theatre Keith works for and he's steadily losing his mind.  
Takes place a month or so after 'Must Have Done Something Right'





	

**Author's Note:**

> OH MY GOODNESS, GUYS. You are all seriously amazing, all of the feedback I've received for this series thus far is incredible. Thank you, thank you for your kinds words from the bottom of my heart. 
> 
> I took some creative license with some of the theatre-centric elements of this fic but the bones of it are pretty much accurate. I am not a stage manager myself, although I work in a theatre so I have some insight. Any inaccuracies in my portrayal here are creative license or accidental. 
> 
> Fic title is from the song 'Pony (It's Okay)' by Erin McCarley

**Gotta Take a Bow, Do it Your Way (It’s Okay)**

            Keith has rules about dating. Keith, in fact, has rules regarding most aspects of his life. He likes order, organization and structure. He has a collection of color-coded sticky notes lined up on his kitchen counter. He can spend literal hours in office-supply stores. He got excited when highlighters with built in sticky-tabs first came out.

            (Despite how impulsive he is, how prone to reckless, hair-brained, spur-of-the-moment decisions like asking out random strangers who hit him with mailboxes – Keith is a very orderly person. Shiro calls it the great contradiction of his personality. Shiro needs to find someone else to psychoanalyze.)

            But back to Keith’s Rules About Dating, filed under ‘Personal Life’, in subsection ‘Relationships with Other Humans – you know you should have those, right?’. (Keith’s pretty sure the only thing keeping him from the loony bin is the fact that he has never written any of these specialized categories or rules down. They are safely in his head where no one can look at them and say, ‘wow, this guy is completely nuts’.) Rule number one is ‘Don’t Ask Anyone Out Right Before Tech Week’. This rule was amended to ‘Before or Immediately After Tech Week’ after he, in a sleep-deprived haze, flirted with someone already in a relationship and got sent to the ER for his troubles. Shiro wrote the new and improved rule on his cast because Shiro is the best/worst brother ever. Who also happens to work in the ER.

            The follow-up to that rule is ‘If You’re In Rehearsal, Warn Them About Tech Week’. Because Tech Week is not normal. Tech Week is a hellish time not comprehensible by mortal minds. Tech Week is the reason Keith started drinking black coffee. Tech Week is the source of his caffeine addiction and the reason most of his relationships crash and burn.

            One month into his (impulse, impulse, impulsive) relationship with his klutzy neighbor, Keith forgets to explain Tech Week.

…

            Day 1

            “What were you saying?” Keith interjects when he realizes that Lance has been speaking for the past three minutes and Keith has failed to comprehend a single word.

            “You all there, babe?” Lance furrows his brows at him and looks two seconds away from actually checking his forehead for a temperature. Keith hasn’t been the focal point of so much nurturing energy since he lived with his brother. It’s…not bad…it’s nice, actually. Really, really nice.

            “Sorry, thinking about work.”

            “Yeah?”

            “We’re a week away from opening night.”

            “Shouldn’t you be, I don’t know, a tiny bit more excited?”

            “I’m a stage manager. I had my emotions surgically removed upon graduation.”

            “Now I know that’s not true,” and Lance is giving him that look that’s half flirtation, half invitation to laugh and Keith would respond, but he’s kind of dead inside and 50% of his brain is definitely still hung up on the last minute changes the director hurled at him last night. Instead he offers a weak smile and lets Lance continue babbling about…something at the Community Center? With the kids? He hears the word ‘Milk-pocalypse’ so it was probably pretty intense.

            Dammit, this director needs to stop changing the goddamn staging.

…

            Day 2

            “Find your fucking light!”

            “Holy shit!”

            Keith wakes up flailing and shouting - flailing and shouting even more when his sudden jump from unconscious to conscious has him thwacking his skull against…another skull?

            “Light cue go…” Keith mutters groggily, blinking in the dimness.

            “Holy _shit_ ,” Lance is sitting on the coffee table, his shape a vague silhouette in the darkness. He’s running his hands over his face and something twists in Keith’s stomach.

            “Oh god, did I - ?”

            “Headbutt me when I tried to do the nice thing and wake you up so you don’t ruin your spine sleeping on that couch? Yes, yes you did.”

            “Is it bleeding?” Keith asks vaguely.

            “Is what bleeding?”

            “…Anything?”

            “No, my beautiful face was spared your uncalled-for violence.”

            “Sorry,” Keith mutters into the couch cushions. His watch’s glowing face tells him it’s three am and he definitely just got home an hour ago.

            “Do you want to go to…? You’re asleep. You’re totally asleep. Already. It’s like a totally useless superpower.”

            “Standby sound,” Keith mumbles incoherently.

…

            Day 3

“Keith. Babe. _Keith_.”

            Keith can’t really pay attention to whoever is trying to distract him right now; he has to re-write the whole damn cuebook because some idiot spilled coffee on his original and _this is why food and beverages belong outside the control booth_.

            “Keith, you’re vibrating. Like, literally shaking like a Chihuahua.”

            “Did you bring me coffee?”

            “No, I’m trying to bring you some sanity, but I’ll settle for common sense.”

            “Okay.”

            A sigh and a hand on his shoulder, “I really don’t get what’s up with you and you’re really freaking me out, dude.”

            “Yeah, okay.”

…

            Day 4

            “CoffeeCoffeeCoffeeCoffeeCoffeeCoffee.”

            “Keith?”

            “Morning, Hunk.”

            “What are you?”

            “Morning. Coffee. Need.”

            “Why are you in our kitchen?”

            “Coffee maker broke. Dumbwaiter works both ways. Coffee.”

            “Oh, so you’re just…taking the whole coffee maker? Well…okay, then…bring it back when you’re done?”

            Keith pauses at the dumbwaiter, cradling the coffee maker, sure that he’s forgotten a few social niceties and also vaguely certain that he needs to apologize to Lance for _something_ but too sleep-deprived to know what, exactly. “Thanks for the coffee. Tell Lance I’m sorry.”

            “For what?”

            “Um. Sorry.” Keith’s brain has reached its limit for non-essential thought. Caffiene had better be imminent or he’s just going to shut down. He escapes through the dumbwaiter before he can mangle the conversation further.         

…

            Day 5

            Keith gives up and just sleeps at the theatre. Tomorrow is the preview show. Tomorrow it all ends. He feels like there’s something he’s forgetting, someone he needs to contact or communicate something to…but it slips away, just outside his awareness. He feels a twist of guilt, the constant fear that he’s forgotten something; that he’s messed something up. He’s destructive like that.

            But he can’t for the life of him remember what it was so he slides into an uneasy sleep curled up on a couch in the green room.

…

            Day 6

            The preview show goes well. The cast is elated; Keith is wound tight and jittering with exhaustion and…OH FUCK.

…

            Day 6 – midnight – technically Day 7

            “What the – Keith? What are you doing? Aren’t you cold?” Lance is sleep-rumpled and unbearably sweet, leaning out of his window to peer down at Keith – who is, in fact cold, standing in a snowdrift underneath his window.

            “Yeah, actually. My shoes aren’t waterproof. Or snowproof.”

            “It’s kind of the same thing.”

            “Yeah.” Keith blinks, sways, god he’s tired, “Wait, no, I came here for a reason.”

            “Wait, no, really? You didn’t just randomly decide to chuck rocks at my window?”

            “It’s actually a rubber bouncy ball. Some actors were fooling around with it backstage so I took it.”

            “Very enlightening,” and Lance is grinning at him, crooked, eyes soft like Keith is something special, before he abruptly straightens and glares, “Hey, no, you don’t get to be weird and endearing, I’m pissed at you!”

            “I know, I’m – ”

            “Nope! Nononono, nope! I refuse to be mature about this! I refuse. Shutting my window now so I don’t have to listen to you stand out there and talk about reasons. Nope! I’d rather it be a mystery. A nice, safe, ignorable mystery!” And then he’s struggling with the window but apparently closing it is harder than opening it was so he’s just sort of tugging futilely at it.

            “Um. Since you’re not actually going anywhere, can I talk now?”

            “No! I have metaphorically left this conversation and cannot hear you.”

            “I’m gonna talk now. Just so you know. If you want to pretend you can’t hear me?”

            “Ugh, you’re seriously going to make me stop trying to close this stupid defective window to clap my hands over my ears and go ‘lalalalala-can’t hear you’ like a toddler?”

            “Or you could not do that. That is an option.”

            “Ugh. Fine, explain why you’re breaking up with me. For the record, if this situation arises ever again, if we’re like one of those sitcom couples that keeps dating and breaking up and dating and breaking up, I’d rather it be left a mystery and oh shit, we’re Janice and Chandler from Friends, that is what is happening right now. I’m Janice. Weird, I always thought I was Chandler…”

            “LANCE!” Keith finds himself shouting, something’s tight in his chest and he’s fighting his way around it to shout through Lance’s storm of words, “I’M NOT BREAKING UP WITH YOU.”

            “…Because I’m very funny and not terribly good with, you know, attractive other people or relationships but I have these really solid friends, you know? Not to mention the New York thing, except we don’t live in the city…so I always thought I was Chandler, but you’re like, I dunno, perfect or something so _you_ can’t be Janice…”

            “SHUT UP, LANCE, I LOVE YOU.”

            “…wait, what?”

            “Dumbass,” Keith finishes the sentence mulishly but at much lower volume.

            “Wait, skip back to before you were insulting me.”

            Keith narrows his eyes, “I don’t think you deserve it.”

            “ _Please._ I called you ‘perfect or something’…”

            “You also thought I was going to break up with you!”

            Lance laughs awkwardly. He’s given up on trying to close the window and is instead leaning into the frame, looking down on Keith. His face is soft, open and unsure. “Well, you’ve been really weird the past few days? And totally work-obsessed and then you were just _gone_ and I kind of...got the message? And then Hunk said you told him to tell me you were _sorry_ and, just so you know, them’s breaking up words.”

            “Apologies?”

            “Vague apologies via third parties!”

            “Oh.”

            Lance rolls his eyes, “’Oh’ he says. You had me freaking out, I didn’t know what was up with you!”

            “You kept trying to take care of me,” Keith says slowly. He’d realized this a few hours ago but it still feels weird to say out loud. He can feel it sing in his blood and fizz on his skin, the happy thought that someone out there _cared_ , without having to, without being told to. Someone tried to take care of him just... _because._ “It was tech week and I was freaking out and running on, like two hours of sleep a night and a nightmare person to be around and you kept trying to take care of me.”

            “Well, yeah, duh. I was really worried, you jerk!”

            “Sorry. For everything. The week before a show is always a trainwreck and a lot of stuff came up at the last minute…”

            “Hey, don’t worry about it.”

            “No, it’s important and I’m sorry and…”

            From the room beside Lance’s, a window slams open. Pidge’s catastrophic starburst of wild blonde hair jabs itself out the window and she squints aggressively at them, “Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to witness the death of Lance’s dignity. It lived a short life. Now would you two stop being completely fucking _high school_ about _everything,_ and go make out somewhere that’s not _here_?”

            Keith’s pretty sure his face is red to the roots of his hair, but he waves to Pidge anyway, “Hi, Pidge.”

            She grunts at him and ducks back inside, slamming the window shut behind her.

            Lance laughs awkwardly and peers down at him, “Soooo, wanna go be really high school and make out on your couch?”

            “Can we be actual old people instead and just fall asleep watching reruns in an actual bed? I’m really tired.”

            Lance beams at him and it’s like the sun, “Why don’t we do a little of both?”

            Keith gives him a shaky smile, “Sounds good.”

…

            Day 7

            “You’re not going to go out with the cast and get drunk?” Lance is leaning against the wall outside the theatre after the show – he’d tried to get tickets but couldn’t on such short notice.

            Keith offers him a small smile, “I can do that at home with more interesting people.”

            “Flattery will get you anywhere. And by anywhere, I mean my pants.”

            “Wow, I did not get that subtext at all until you explained it in a really obvious way,” Keith says flatly, accepting the hand Lance holds out to him, tangling their fingers together and letting himself be pulled over to the car.

            “Aww, but you love it.”

            Keith groans theatrically.

            “Yooou admitted it. Now you’re stuck knowing that I know that you looove me.” Lance swings their joined hands between them, sing-songing the words. He suddenly pauses, though, and spins around to face Keith, bringing them almost nose-to-nose. It’s cold, the winter air still nipping at their skin and turning their breath to clouds of steam. “Hey,” Lance’s voice is serious now, softer, “You know I do too, right?”

            “Love you?” Keith says, trying to retain some of that distance, physical, emotional, whatever, despite the fact that any distance there might have been is effectively gone.

            Lance rolls his eyes, “Love you,” and then again, in case Keith hadn’t gotten the message, “I love you. Despite the fact that you lose your mind and turn into some kind of coffee-stealing-head-butting gremlin the week before a play opens.”

            “I’m a stage manager, it happens.”

            Lance kisses him on the forehead and then both cheeks with a resounding smack. “Come on, let’s go home.”

            Keith lets himself be tugged forward just enough to encroach on Lance’s space and kiss him once, soft, on the lips. “Thank you.”

            “For what?”

            “Being you.”

            “You mean being _excellent._ ”

            “See, this is why I don’t compliment you.”

            “Yeah, but you looove me.”

“Just drive us home.”

…

            Lance was right that night they met – it is totally true love or something.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Fear not! This is not the end of this AU! I have many more ideas for ficlets set in this 'verse and should be posting them soonish depending on my real life schedule.


End file.
